The Oakland Police Department's response to Occupy Oakland protests this fall raised "serious concerns" about the Department's ability to "hold true to the best practices in American policing," according to monitors tasked with overseeing the department's progress toward implementing court-ordered reforms.

In a report released Tuesday, the monitors promised that their next assessment, due in April, would include a thorough investigation of police activity connected with Occupy Oakland.

That investigation could increase the chances a federal court will take over OPD until the department can fully implement the improvements. "[W]e cannot help but view the events of Occupy Oakland as a test of the reform mettle of this Department," the monitors wrote.

While the monitors commended the efforts of Mayor Jean Quan and police Chief Howard Jordan, they noted that the department has made very little progress in the past two years. The city has already missed two deadlines to complete the reforms, and the new deadline is only a year away.

The police response to Occupy Oakland calls into question those improvements that the department has made, the head monitor, Robert Warshaw, wrote in the report.

"I cannot overstate our concern that although progress on compliance has been slow, even those advancements may have been put in doubt in the face of these events," Warshaw wrote.

Among the issues the monitors will examine are officers’ uses of force during protests and whether the department had adequately trained officers on crowd-control policies. They will also investigate whether the department followed procedures for reporting complaints and policy violations to the department's Internal Affairs Division. As The Bay Citizen reported last week, a supervisor was demoted to sergeant after he failed to report an officer who was hiding his nameplate, a violation of the department’s reform agreement.

"We were, in some instances, satisfied with the performance of the Department, yet in others we were thoroughly dismayed by what we observed,” the monitors wrote.

The possibility that other law enforcement agencies played a role in misconduct during the response to Occupy Oakland does not excuse the OPD, the monitors wrote. Oakland requested officers from at least 17 agencies to help evict Occupy protesters from Oakland's Frank H. Ogawa Plaza on Oct. 25. Many of those agencies also participated in the police response to a protest later that night that turned bloody.

Scott Olsen, an Iraq war veteran, suffered a fractured skull during clashes between officers and protesters that night.

The unusual policing challenges posed by the protests “do not relieve the Department, in any way, of any of the requirements” of the negotiated settlement agreement, or NSA, the monitors wrote. “Instead, it is precisely in such times that the reforms agreed upon in the NSA are at their point of greatest significance, as they govern the behavior of the Department and its officers.”

Warshaw wrote: “The events around Occupy Oakland appear to raise some serious concerns about the capacity of the Department to, on its own, adopt and hold true to the best practices in American policing.”

"For the moment, we find ourselves facing an uncomfortable reality: The path forward is not clear," he continued.

The monitors were first brought on in 2003 as part of the settlement agreement in the Riders case, in which four Oakland police officers were accused of planting drug evidence on suspects in East Oakland. The agreement requires the department to make a series of reforms related to misconduct, and the monitors are tasked with auditing the department’s progress.

“Overall, I found the report very disturbing in the sense that so little progress has been made,” said Jim Chanin, one of the attorneys whose lawsuit against the department led to the reforms. “There really is no sign that this is ever going to come to an end.”

In addition to Occupy Oakland, the monitors raised concerns about the department’s parole and probation searches.

The monitors reviewed 400 records of police stops, 70 arrest reports and 16 closed Internal Affairs investigations, and found that the overwhelming majority of parole and probation stops and arrests involved individuals who are black. The monitors also wrote that officers routinely ask people if they are on parole or probation, “even when there is no independent justification for the inquiry.”

“This practice can have a chilling effect on police-community relations, and resentment over these inquiries can — and does — result in citizen complaints,” the monitors wrote.

Chanin said he and co-attorney John Burris were working on a response to the report Tuesday. Sue Piper, spokeswoman for Mayor Jean Quan, said her office was still reviewing the report. A police department spokesperson could not be reached for comment.

The police department's next court hearing is scheduled for Jan. 26.